What we need the new government to deliver over the next 3 years
Labour’s resounding election win on Saturday means it can govern alone and without the ‘hand brake’ of NZ First. The result also means they now have no excuses for not delivering and gives the opportunity for some transformational change, but the fear is they won’t make the most of that.…
84 Comments Auckland Election Transport Policy Roundup
Transport policies typically play a leading role in local government elections but don’t tend to be as important in central government ones. Instead topics like the economy, health, education and more recently climate/environment play a much larger role. But of course a party’s transport policies can often be a major lever in how successful they might be in achieving those other goals.…
School Traffic
School traffic – it’s probably not on anyone’s list of favourite things. But it’s a problem worth tackling. If children are safe to make their own way to school, their health and learning would improve, parents would be freed from taxi driver service, and congestion, emissions, noise and fumes would all reduce.…
Flashback Saturday: The REAL Cost of Cars
On weekends we like to dig into the archives. This post was first published in April 2009.
Now if I’m being honest here, I will admit that public transport advocates do get hammered a bit on the whole “economics of transport” debate.…
EVs in the bus lanes – not this again
Last week the National Party announced a repeat of a failed policy they tried last time they were in government, allowing electric vehicles to use bus lanes. As with last time, they say it’s all about encouraging people and businesses to buy EVs.…
Flashback Sunday: Draft 2009 Auckland Transport Plan
On weekends we like to dig into the archives. This post comes from some of the earliest days of this blog and was first published in March 2009.
The Draft 2009 Auckland Transport Plan has been released by ARTA for public comment and submissions.…
Death, Taxes …… and highways
It is said that nothing in this world is certain, except for death and taxes. But according to Waka Kotahi NZTA, that saying needs to also include motorway widening.
Yesterday Stuff reported:
The Ministry for the Environment advised the Government not to fast-track the upgrade of State Highway 1, because it could increase carbon emissions.…
Is transport modelling junk science?
A great article on transport modelling did the rounds over the past couple of weeks, raising questions about how much reliance we put on these algorithms in our transport decision-making process. We have criticised transport modelling on many occasions over the years, especially in relation to the City Rail Link business case – where inadequate modelling probably led to the project being delayed for a number of years.…
The things we should be copying from Sweden
With the re-emergence of COVID-19 in NZ we’ve once again seen some commentators calling for us to follow the Swedish model of letting the virus into the community in a bid for herd immunity. This has come about despite all the evidence so far pointing to them having achieved worse health and economic outcomes than those that have taken a more cautious approach, such as their neighbours and of course us.…
2020 Election transport policies we’d like to see
We’re now fully into election season and politicians are keen for attention an we’ve already seen National start to roll out a hugely expensive and likely unachievable transport policy.
We’ve been thinking about some of the things we’d like to see in a transport policy so here goes: Plan and start the rest of the Rapid Transit Network/s
Auckland’s fledgling Rapid Transit network has been a standout public transport success story, accounting for nearly half of all the growth in the use of PT over the last decade.…
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